Though Hell Should Bar the Way

by David Drake

  It was a moment before Woetjans lowered the chairs and allowed the manager to take her arm. Her face was as white as chipped stone when she passed me.

  I took a deep breath and bowed to Ferrante. “Thank you for your help, Master Ferrante,” I said. “I’m glad no more than your presence was needed.”

  Everybody kept out of my way as I left Rustermann’s. I walked across the street to Gino’s, which turned out to be steak house.

  * * *

  I was most of the way through a rare rib eye and contemplating a second glass of the red wine the waiter had recommended. It was strong flavored, but it complemented the meat—from real Earth cows—perfectly.

  I was beginning to relax. It’d been a hell of a day.

  A tubby man came over to the table where I sat alone. He wore an open-necked shirt and loose trousers, but he didn’t need dress clothes or a uniform to project authority.

  “The meal has been to your taste, sir?” he asked.

  “Perfectly,” I said. “I’m never sure what I’m going to get when I order ‘rare,’ but here it’s rare.”

  “If I may ask, sir?”

  I nodded, wondering what was going to come next. I took the last sip from my glass, holding the man’s eyes.

  “My head waiter tells me that you were ejected from Rustermann’s,” the man said. “Was that the case?”

  I put my glass down. “Not exactly,” I said. “I had no intention of eating there, but I saw some flunkies barring a shipmate whom I knew to have been invited to a dinner there with our captain. It was a dress-code violation.”

  I felt my lips purse as I wondered how to put the next part. I said, “I intervened to bring the matter to the manager’s attention. It, ah, got heated for a moment at the end. If that’s a problem, I’ll pay and leave immediately.”

  “Is no problem,” the man said. He set my bill on the table—a trifle early, I thought, but nobody wants brawlers in his business.

  I reached for the bill, but the man scrawled something across the face of it with a stylus. He turned and walked off, but I’m sure the words he muttered were “Snooty bastards!”

  I looked at the bill. The price was as bad as I’d expected it to be. Over it was written Paid in Full/Gino.

  I left a full tip on the table when I left, after another glass of wine.

  Chapter Eleven

  Barnes had warned me that the two of us would be dry-lubing Antenna Dorsal A on our next watch. Though I’d never done it, I knew that applying graphite to all the joints was a miserable, filthy job. Well, I wanted to be a spacer.

  Very few people had dry-lubed an antenna in space. It’s never necessary to do. Not doing it just means the antenna moves a little more stiffly than it ought to and puts a little more strain on the machinery. Commercial ships don’t have the sail area to take an antenna out of service for most of a day, and even naval vessels preferred to leave the job to shipyards where the dust could be washed off instead of being brought into the ship’s interior.

  The coming job was hanging over me, but I still had a couple hours of my own time. Our next landfall was Santiago. I’d read what I could find about the place, but it occurred to me that Officer Mundy might have information beyond the official bare bones.

  I’d heard more things about Mundy by now. I was sure that they weren’t all true—they couldn’t be if she was human—but I was willing to accept that she was a spy and that she was a skilled librarian. Her spying was no business of mine, but someone who had the skill of researching and organizing information was exactly what I needed now.

  At the moment she was lost in the world formed by her dancing control wands. Instead of breaking in, I walked to her servant, seated beside Mundy at her station and said, “Mistress Tovera, I would like to ask Officer Mundy about information on Santiago. Background beyond the Sailing Directions for when we touch down. Would you pass that request to her when she becomes free, please?”

  Tovera grinned at me. I’d heard more about her too. Now that I’d known Tovera for a little while, Maeve’s statement that she was a sociopathic killer didn’t seem as ridiculous as it had at the time.

  “I’ll let her know,” Tovera said. “I expect that she’ll have a file ready for you when you come off watch.”

  “Thank you, mistress,” I said. I made a slight bow and headed to my cabin to catch an hour of sleep before I went on watch.

  I wasn’t sure how to deal with Tovera; she certainly wasn’t just the clerk of a junior warrant officer, whom I as an officer ranked. On the other hand, simple courtesy generally struck me as the best choice, unless there was a good reason for something else. And maybe even then.

  * * *

  Barnes and I fed graphite into the antenna’s topmast joint. I didn’t bother disconnecting the pump because we wouldn’t have body parts in the way at this stage. It was a dirty job, but it wasn’t a particularly tough one.

  Barnes sent me to the emergency controls. I selected the topmast and held my gauntleted thumb on the Down button. The mast began to telescope, but very slowly. Barnes signalled me to stop and rejoin him. I locked the controls closed before I obeyed.

  He’d already started opening the gearbox when I got there. He put his helmet to mine and said, “I should’ve checked this first. It wasn’t the tubes binding, they were fine. The drive gear’s worn!”

  He pointed his finger. The pulley was pinned to a gear, which in turn was driven by a gear in the transmission. The alignment hadn’t been perfect; the drive gear had been running on the outer edge of the driven gear and had worn it almost smooth.

  I bent to read the inventory number. Barnes lifted my head and said, “For now we’re not going to bother with replacing the set and restringing the cable. I’ll show you a trick.”

  He disconnected the hydraulic line—I’d have done it myself if he hadn’t—and took a chisel and heavy hammer from his pouch. He placed the chisel edge on the side of the driven gear and struck a hard blow, shearing off the rivet head. He set the chisel again and pointed to the gear; I held it by the gear teeth, keeping my fingers out of Barnes way. He struck again and the gear came loose in my hand. I cupped it in my palms while the bosun’s mate knocked the shafts of the beheaded rivets out of the pulley.

  Barnes thrust cotter pins through both rivet holes, then set the driven gear over them—with the other face upward. He peened over the legs of the cotter pins, then touched helmets with me. “Hook the motor back up, kid,” he said. “I think that’ll hold till we’re on the ground again.”

  The antenna ran up and down slickly. Lubricating the joint no doubt helped, but not enough to mention. The problem had been the worn gear.

  * * *

  Barnes and I locked through at the end of watch with Bondurant and Cerne, who were arguing about the relative merits of the prostitutes to be had on Bryce and Pleasaunce. Garden-variety streetwalkers, I gathered; neither man sounded as though he had refined tastes.

  Bryce and Pleasaunce were powerful members of the Alliance of Free Stars and not common destinations for Cinnabar citizens. Very few people on Xenos could have joined in the discussion. It demonstrated that experience didn’t equate with culture.

  To Barnes as the lock filled, I said, “Will those cotter pins hold up?”

  “Long enough,” he said, shrugging in his hard suit. “I didn’t feel like swapping out the pulley in the Matrix when we’ll be on the surface in a couple watches.”

  He grinned broadly. “You already proved you could string a cable,” he said, “and that’s what it’d take to replace the whole set.”

  The lock opened. In the rotunda I began undoing my suit. Barnes, Bondurant and Cerne got theirs off quickly. The common spacers were arguing fine points that I couldn’t even understand. I was all right with my ignorance.

  Woetjans came out of the companionway, saw me, and braced my shoulder as I got my legs clear. “Hey, kid?” she said. “We oughta be on Santiago in a couple hours. Got any plans for there?”

&nb
sp; “No, ma’am,” I said over my shoulder as I hung up my suit. “Do you want me to swap watches with somebody?”

  “Not that,” said the bosun. She looked away. “Look, kid? Would you let me take you to dinner? I’ll pay, only you gotta pick the place.”

  I guess my face went blank. The gods know my mind did.

  “Oh, bloody hell, not that!” Woetjans said. I swear to heaven she was blushing. “Look, not that you’re not cute, but I like ’em a little better growed. Naw, I just want to talk with you where we can. I owe you for Breckinridge, you know.”

  “You don’t owe me anything!” I said. “We’re shipmates. But I’m not proud—I’ll let you buy me dinner. Or whatever it is when we land.”

  “Thanks, kid,” she said as she strode to the companionways again. “Remember, you pick the place!”

  I went onto the bridge to see what Officer Mundy had for me. I hoped that she’d found information on restaurants not too far from the harbor. That hadn’t been one of the things I’d been worried about.

  Chapter Twelve

  Captain Leary brought us down in the harbor at Santiago, the capital of the planet of the same name. He put me in the striker’s seat, just as he had when Lieutenant Enery landed on Hansen’s World.

  I’d thought Enery’s landing was flawless. I thought the same of the Captain’s. I was no expert, but both were a lot smoother than the computer landings I’d experienced in jaunts to orbit and back in training. Seeing it done right made me even more determined to leave the job to the computer, at least until I’d had several more years of training on simulators.

  After landing I went to my cabin to change for liberty. The boarding hold was already full of spacers going on leave, but they’d be wearing utilities. I was changing out of uniform. The Sunray was a commercial vessel, but she was run on RCN lines by RCN personnel, and I didn’t intend to give myself any breaks.

  I decided to wear an outfit different from what I’d worn on Hansen’s World: dark brown slacks and a matching jacket, over a bright yellow tunic. As I sealed the shirt seam, someone knocked on the door panel.

  “Just a second!” I called, tucking in the shirt tail. I strolled to the panel.

  I figured that Woetjans had gotten through with the docking procedures more quickly than she’d expected to. There was no reason for the bosun to superintend rolling out the extension bridge with a crew as experienced as this one. She and both her mates had been present to check me out in the lounge; a senior rigger was probably in charge on the hull, but they were all senior riggers. Woetjans liked to do it, though.

  I opened the panel. Maeve smiled at me. She said, “I decided that the hull wasn’t the best place for us to get acquainted. Would you like to go to dinner tonight? I hear that Santiago has some nice places.”

  She was wearing a body suit, black with sudden silvery highlights. It wasn’t at all tight, but the ways it clung and slipped would’ve gotten any man’s attention. It sure got mine.

  “I’m very sorry, Maeve,” I said. “I’ve already made a dinner engagement for tonight.”

  Maeve looked startled, then smiled warmly. “Well, there’ll be another time,” she said. “I hope so, anyway.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly and she added, “With Lieutenant Enery, I suppose? She’s had some bad luck and certainly deserves some fun in her life.”

  I thought I heard condescension in Maeve’s voice. I found the first officer unsettling to be around, but the sneer—maybe I imagined it, maybe—made me angry on Enery’s account even though she wasn’t present to hear it.

  “No, mistress,” I said as calmly as I could. “I’m having dinner with the Chief of Rig tonight. Bosun Woetjans, you know.”

  It suddenly struck me that I didn’t know Woetjans’ first name. I’ll ask her tonight, though I don’t suppose it really matters.

  “I don’t think I know …” Maeve said. Her smile slipped. “Oh. Oh.”

  When the smile returned, it was as false as a politician’s. “Well, another time, as I said.”

  She turned and strode very quickly to the companionway. I couldn’t have offended her so badly if I’d slapped her face.

  But you shouldn’t treat people that way, even if you’re pretty and they never were, even before they got burned. I put on the jacket I’d laid on the bed; then I went to the bridge and chatted with Cory while I waited for Woetjans to get off duty.

  According to the information from Mundy, there was a Museum of the Settlement in Santiago. It didn’t sound like much, but I’d try it tomorrow if I had time to. Far planets were a new experience to me. I might get blasé about them, but I didn’t think so.

  Woetjans stuck her head onto the bridge and said that she was going to change and would be back in a jiff. “No rush,” I called to her back. I didn’t expect to make a long night of it.

  Cory was telling me about visiting public works departments when they landed on new planets, the ones organized enough to have such things. His father was a paving contractor on their homeworld of Florentine, and it gave Cory a feeling of comfort to talk shop.

  I thought about the sudden wash of homesickness when I’d walked into Apex Outfitters. I wondered if I could arrange to negotiate with all suppliers, as long as I was aboard the Sunray.

  “Okay, kid,” Woetjans called from the hatchway. “Where’re we going to dinner?”

  I looked at her. “A place called the Plumb Bob,” I said. “But what happened to your liberty suit?”

  She was wearing new utilities, tailored but otherwise unadorned.

  Woetjans looked away. “Well,” she said, “you know … I appreciate what you did in Breckinridge, but I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  “Woetjans!” I said. “Put your bloody liberty suit on! I’m not taking us anywhere they won’t serve spacers, and if I’ve figured wrong we’ll bloody well go somewhere else!”

  Woetjans looked blank for a moment. “Yessir!” she said and trotted for her cabin.

  When she was out of sight, Cory chuckled slightly. “You know, Roy,” he said, “I wasn’t sure you were really cut out to be an officer. Guess I was wrong to wonder.”

  Woetjans was back in a moment, bright and fluttering. We headed down to the boarding hold and out. I turned left at the street along the harbor, saying, “It’s about six blocks. Mostly west, but a block in from the harbor, that’s north.”

  “Then let’s take the block inland first,” Woetjans said. “Along the street by the harbor, it runs to warehouses and factories even beyond where it’s dives. Most of the places I’ve been, I mean.”

  “That’s better than what I’ve got,” I said, changing direction to cross the street. “All I have is a map.”

  We crossed as a couple of heavy trucks rolled past—one in either direction. They weren’t moving fast.

  “The information I’ve got is about three years old,” I said. “The place I’m looking for may not be around.”

  “Kid, I don’t care,” Woetjans said. “Not a scrap. I just wanted it to be you picking, not me.”

  The traffic along the street we were following was steady but not fast. The standard local vehicle had four tall wheels and a squarish box on top of them. It seemed to me that if one hit us, the car would be worse off than we were—though they were probably sturdier than they looked.

  Woetjans shook herself. She kneaded her pectoral muscles with both hands.

  I could loan her my jacket as a drape over her shoulders; it wouldn’t fit, of course. I was finding the evening a little nippy myself.

  Woetjans saw me looking at her and said, “It’s just the muscles still tighten up when it gets cold. I’m fine, the weather here’s warmer than lots of places I’ve been.”

  “Ah,” I said. “You were shot several times in the chest and returned to duty?”

  “You’re bloody right I did!” Woetjans said. “It was just a dumb mistake, I wasn’t fast enough getting through a doorway. There was a medicomp in the next bloody room!”

&nb
sp; “Right!” I said, nodding in fierce agreement. You don’t suggest to anybody that they can’t do their job, and suggesting that to somebody like Woetjans could be, well, dangerous.

  And I hadn’t meant to do that, but it’d come out that way to her just because it was such a hot button. I chuckled. To explain it I said aloud, “Bloody hell, woman, who’d be dumb enough to say that you couldn’t do your job?”

  What I’d really been thinking was that I’d known being an RCN officer was dangerous. I hadn’t guessed that asking a simple question about information a shipmate had volunteered might be one of those dangers.

  “Nobody who didn’t want to learn how far I could throw them through the nearest wall,” Woetjans said. She laughed as well, but I was pretty sure that it was also the cold truth. I’d gotten a break because she liked me and she was sure I hadn’t meant anything by it.

  The sign of the place where the Plumb Bob was supposed to be now read CATCH OF THE DAY, with a leaping fish which seemed to have fins sticking out in four directions. “Are you up for seafood?” I said. “I guess they changed their menu since Officer Mundy got her information.”

  “Sure, that’s fine,” Woetjans said. “Say, that fish looks just like a ship, don’t it?”

  The fins really did stick out from the fish’s body the way antennas did from a starship’s hull in the Matrix. It wasn’t a connection I’d have made, but I hadn’t spent my working life as a rigger.

  The doors pulled open; the headwaiter’s station was set just back from the entrance. It could have been in Xenos—or in Breckinridge or I suspect anywhere people weren’t too close to the edge. A city with a busy starport has at least modest comforts for the locals—as well as with the sort of establishments that serve spacers.

  “A table for two,” I said to the dapper little man who turned a professional smile on us. More than half the seats were filled, but the place wasn’t packed yet. “A booth if that’s possible.”

  “And I get the bill!” said Woetjans. She didn’t exactly shout, but her voice from just behind—and above—me made me jump.